A few virtual stops

Last week I downloaded and activated a Second Life account. I didn't get an opportunity to play with it last week, so this morning I decided to take my avatar and go visit a few places. Maybe because I am new to Second Life, but I find it difficult to figure out where to go. I had the Second Life website open and could search for places to go easily here. I was disappointed to find no Library of Congress site, but I did locate ALA's library. So, when I clicked 'go here,' my computer asked me what application to use. I got frustrated with this as I couldn't seem to find the Second Life application. When I am in the actual downloaded version of Second Life, I can't find a search bar anywhere within the destinations. So, I'm left to go through each destination category to look through. This is painstakingly slow - probably because my video card in my computer can't handle the 3D graphics efficiently. I finally made it to the Alamo, but it took me so long to get inside, I was too frustrated by that point to go any further. Possibly with more time and a faster computer, I would be able to familiarize myself enough to where I would feel comfortable navigating and instructing a class of students to navigate through it also. I can see the benefits in class after doing a study about the Alamo to being able to visit it virtually in class. Second Life is different than any other 'virtual tour' I have seen or been to. Although it is cartoonish, the characteristics of the different sites have a sense of "realness" to them.

Following my Second Life experience, I visited the Library of Congress's website. I was excited to learn about myLOC - a way to virtually visit the exhibits, look through books, listen to sound bites and see lots of interactive tools. How cool!!! I can envision this to be a great resource for lots of subjects. I went through and looked at the Thomas Jefferson's Library exhibition. The first thing that came to mind when looking at all of these fun things was to set up a scavenger hunt for the students within the Thomas Jefferson exhibit online. The kids would have a lot of fun with that and they would pick up some interesting tidbits along the way! Another exhibition that would be awesome to use in the classroom would be The Last Full Measure: Civil War Photographs from the Liljenquist Family Collection. This shows photographs of the uniforms and weapons of the Union & Confederate soldiers of the civil war. What I noticed, too, when selecting what exhibition I wanted to view, it seems that even if the exhibitions are no longer at the LOC, they remain online to visit virtually. That makes using this site all the better because there's never that deadline of having to visit it before it's gone! In addition to the exhibitions, there is a virtual tour of the LOC. Also, there is a tab for students & teachers. This tab gives teachers lesson planning ideas and the students online activities within the LOC website. Currently, the featured online activity is Thomas Jefferson's Building: Secret Messages. Students explore the Library's historic Thomas Jefferson building to discover some of the unusual objects in and around the building, and to think about what messages these objects might send about the Library's purpose. There are more activities and there is also a list of books for young readers. I may have to check this list out to see if it gives me any ideas for my reading assignment! :)